


Bombshell

by QueenAng



Series: Rumors, Speculations, and Other Revelations [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M, News Media, Newspapers, Other, Politics, Transformer Sparklings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28848219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenAng/pseuds/QueenAng
Summary: "In a stunning twist of events, intrepid reporter Bluewing of Vos discovered that Emperor Perpetua Starscream has been hiding both a Conjunx and a trine of sparklings."
Relationships: Starscream/Wheeljack (Transformers)
Series: Rumors, Speculations, and Other Revelations [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2115402
Comments: 15
Kudos: 71





	1. Chapter 1

Bluewing had stared at the document beaming from her data-pad for an inordinate amount of time. Around her, the rest of Iacon Culture’s writing team had already departed for the night-cycle, leaving the vast rows of offices dark aside from the bright blue beaming from her spot. She didn’t dare look at the time.

She frowned at the title splashed in bold font across the top of the document. Her brief time in Iacon’s Governmental Building had been short but insightful. Undoubtedly, the things she learned could keep her page full for orns to come. Her editor would be delighted. With a topic so mysterious, she could bring in new readers and boost her stats for the rest of career.

But, looking at the document’s title, Bluewing wondered if it was _right_.

_Emperor Perpetua Hiding Secret Sparklings_

She let out a long vent, half-shuttering her optics. _No_ , this wouldn’t do. She backspaced until the words vanished. Starscream was notoriously private, but also irresistibly charming. Anything with his name would garner millions of reads.

_Starscream Hiding Secret Sparklings, Scandalous Relationship_

It was a bit on the olfactory ridge, but it got the job done. Scandal and Starscream went servo in servo. Much better, in her professional opinion.

Title at last taken care of, she submitted the article to her editor for the morning run, shut off her terminal, and began to head back to her hab-suite for a long-awaited recharge cycle. At this rate, she would sleep in just long enough to wake up to the worst of the scandal playing out before her.

Excellent.

* * *

The sound of Wheeljack’s internal alarm brought him out of a good recharge. He shut it off, keeping his optics closed as he adjusted to wakefulness. It was rare that his own alarm, rather than Starscream’s, woke them. Then again, Starscream’s hectic meeting schedule didn’t always include early morning meetings. Those were Wheeljack’s favorite sort of days, he thought, as he twisted around to throw an arm around where Starscream slept.

And found the berth to be cold and empty.

Wheeljack’s optics shot open, blearily taking in the scene of their dark berth-room. Light streamed in from the edges of the curtained window taking up most of the far wall. Starscream’s cape and crown – reserved for formal events – remained untouched on the podium and hanger Wheeljack had crafted vorns ago. The sheets had been thrown haphazardly from Starscream’s side, so evidently he had quickly and silently slipped away at some point. Despite his name, he could be alarmingly quiet when he needed to be.

Wheeljack got up himself, stretching his joints and checking his comm for any missed messages. Nothing. Nothing from Starscream, at least.

There was a series of messages from Windblade.

_I’m sorry._

_Don’t worry about Metroplex today. It can wait._

_You should probably keep the trine inside._

Ironhide, meanwhile, had sent a single inquiry: _You need me to watch the trine while you guys handle this?_

Wheeljack paused. Ironhide only ever offered to watch the trine when something particularly big came up. He ran the past few cycles through his processor, trying to pick out when things could have gone awry. It had all been wonderfully monotonous, aside from the dented helm he’d been given by Ironhide after the trine escaped him while—

Bluewing.

Had she said something in her report about Metroplex? If Windblade was out, busy doing damage control regarding the state of the city-former, then Wheeljack would definitely be needed to fix whatever he could on Metroplex’s frame in case any inquiries were raised. But then, why worry about the trine? Was the populace that upset about Metroplex’s health that they could risk getting caught up in the chaos? Wheeljack loved them to death, but even he had to admit they attracted trouble like a magnet. It was sweet of Windblade to think of that while busy caring for Metroplex’s reputation.

Wheeljack stepped out of his and Starscream’s berth-room to find the trine already awake and milling about. Nothing looked destroyed, so they hadn’t been up too long. Instead, all three were seated around the table; Slipstream and Nightfall tried to snatch a data-pad from each other, while Sunstorm watched with wide optics and a half-full cube of energon. The sisters’ own breakfast had been abandoned in favor of this new toy.

Wheeljack quickly stalked over. “What do you have?” he said, trying to make his voice hard. They _really_ didn’t need another incident of the sparklings drawing all over a city infrastructure report, however cute their depiction of Metroplex had been. Starscream had been charmed as well, though he refused to verbally acknowledge it. Wheeljack pretended he didn’t know that Starscream had copies of all their artistic misadventures plastered across the home-screen of his office data-terminal.

In Nightfall’s brief distraction when she turned to look at her sire, Slipstream grabbed the data-pad from her servos and held it up high. She pointed somewhere near the middle of the document. “Is that my name?” she asked.

Wheeljack was prepared to tell no, that wasn’t her name, and then carefully write it out in large glyphs for her to see, before he realized, no, wait, that _was_ her name, glyphs perfectly spelled out and typed seamlessly. Wheeljack didn’t even need to look at the rest of the document around it to know Slipstream hadn’t managed to figure out typing yet; she still didn’t know Starscream’s designation was “Starscream” and not “Ri”.

Wheeljack snatched the data-pad from her as gently as he could with shaking servos. “Where did you get this?”

Slipstream might have had her carrier’s overwhelming personality, but she could also read a room. In a quieter voice, she said, “It was on the table.”

Sunstorm piped up, “I didn’t touch it, Sa.”

“I did,” Nightfall said. “I took it from Ri.”

Well, that certainly explained Starscream’s sudden and abrupt absence. Damage control. Wheeljack tried to think positive. Starscream was certainly already on top of damage control.

_Starscream Hiding Secret Sparklings, Scandalous Relationship_

_Written by Bluewing of Vos, Edited by Torrent of Rodion_

Wheeljack had lived through four million years of the universe’s most brutal war and never really hated anyone. Sure, he hated the things the Decepticons did, but beneath it all they were just bots doing nothing better or worse than what the Autobots did back to them. It was an endless game, taking turns with war crimes. The only bot Wheeljack could say he truly might hate was Megatron.

He _hated_ Bluewing.

The data-pad let out a warning creak in his servos. Slipstream immediately reached up and slapped him on the servo. “You’re breaking it!” she exclaimed.

Briefly mollified, Wheeljack loosened his grip on the data-pad. The screen fritzed for a second before bringing back up the article. He felt his vent rate increase just looking at the screen, optics unconsciously taking in the sight of the trine’s designations where they appeared.

He sat down in the nearest chair – or, maybe collapsed was the better word – and began to read.

_In a stunning twist of events, intrepid reporter Bluewing of Vos discovered that Emperor Perpetua Starscream has been hiding both a Conjunx and a trine of sparklings._

_During an investigative report on the state of Metroplex’s health, it came to light that Starscream had both a trine of sparklings and a Conjunx. His partner is none other than Wheeljack of Ultirex, the former Autobot head of science responsible for creating such notable weapons as the giga-watt bomb and the dark forcefield amplifier. Any survivor of the war can surely remember weapons such as these with striking clarity. The giga-watt bomb in particular is largely credited for ending the stalemate at Silapix by decimating the Decepticon frontline forces._

Wheeljack remembered Silapix with far more than _‘striking clarity’_. The heavy stench of burning energon and sentio metallico was not one easily forgotten.

_Thus, one must wonder how the former Decepticon second-in-command came to be with the Autobot lead scientist when both were invariably responsible for the deaths of their current Conjunx’s former comrades-in-arms._

_The most obvious conclusion is that this is a subtle attempt at bandaging wounds left between the previous factions. Wheeljack of Ultirex is one of a few Autobot command staff still left on Cybertron; Ironhide has been taken in by Starscream’s administration as well, Jazz and Prowl remain Conjunxed to one another, Optimus Prime lives in exile, and Ratchet is currently traveling aboard the Lost Light under Rodimus. The Autobot scientist is therefore the highest-ranking Autobot commander left available on the planet._

_It is most likely there would have been a future attempt to faze their relationship into being in the public eye, most certainly slowly enough to seem natural to outside onlookers. It would have served as a high point of Autobot-Decepticon reconciliation. After all, if the former Second-in-Command of the Decepticons can Conjunx the mech who undoubtedly destroyed legions of his troops, then there was surely hope for the rest of the remaining armies._

_However logical this course of thought may seem, it is still mere speculation. There is yet a chance that the Emperor Perpetua became with spark after an illicit affair with the current engineer of Metroplex, and a Conjunx bond was established to provide stability for the sparklings and prevent scandal when the truth inevitably came to light. Given the secrecy of the relationship and the sudden bonding outside of the public eye, this appears to be the most reasonable conclusion to draw. As a former prince of Vos, Starscream would have been brought up with insider knowledge on how to balm interface-related scandals in the press._

_It is unlikely that a Conjunx bond was performed adequately over such a short courtship. One would think the Four Acts would be, if nothing else, just public enough to start the barest of rumors. It calls into question whether the Four Acts were part of this Conjunxing at all, or whether a Priest of Primus was simply bribed – or even coerced – by a mech of Starscream’s position and status to officiate a farce bonding._

_It seems the management of this scandal was still in the works when the information inadvertently came to light during yester-cycle’s meeting. To suggest that Cybertron’s Emperor Perpetua had even one sparkling running underfoot – let alone three – would have been seen as preposterous. Yes, despite this, the existence of Nightfall, Slipstream, and Sunstorm was unquestionably proven; when it comes to gaining access to the laboratory where Metroplex himself undergoes repairs, only a select few are privy, and these young sparklings are welcomed in without a second thought, without even a lock keeping them separate._

The idea of a lock being enough to stop one of the trine, let alone all three, was laughable. Wheeljack was not laughing.

_Most importantly in this scandal is the potential effect on Cybertron’s tumultuous political atmosphere. With tensions still so high between former Autobots and Decepticons, and this union coming out so suddenly rather than slowly introduced as was undoubtedly the scheme, one is left to wonder what the fallout might be. Beyond that, new concerns have now been raised about the security of Metroplex’s health, the dedication of Iacon’s foremost engineer, and the ethics of this fledgling government that allows sparklings free roaming of the government building._

He skimmed the rest of the article. Bluewing didn’t mention the sparklings by name again; she didn’t need to, the damage was already done. Instead, the rest of the article was dedicated to the infallible theory that Wheeljack had accidentally sparked up Cybertron’s emperor and was now pulled away from maintaining Iacon to help secret them away on Starscream’s orders.

He sent a comm to Windblade before reading the article over again. Rather than looking for the sparklings’ names this time, he searched for any sort of evidence, any quote or sign Bluewing may have picked up on her journey through the building that would throw support behind her theory. He found none. Not that it mattered. Starscream and scandals went servo-in-servo. Even with only Bluewing’s glyph on the matter, the article would be spread around like fact. The secrecy was as good as over.

He jumped at the sound of the door chime. “I’ll get it!” Nightfall said, and slammed the button for the door before Wheeljack could stop her.

Windblade slipped in quickly, nudging Nightfall out of the doorway with her shin.

Nightfall tried to peer around her. “Where’s Aunt Chromia?” she asked.

“Busy,” Windblade said, unusually curt. Her optics fixed on Wheeljack. “There is—”

“Aunt Windblade!” Slipstream all but fell off the table, the data-pad once again in her servos. “Look, look! My designation is on the data-pad!”

Windblade took the data-pad offered to her like it was a weapon. “That’s nice,” she said slowly.

Wheeljack crossed over to her before Sunstorm could insert himself as well. He didn’t bother with greetings. “I just need you to watch them for a while,” he said, without preamble. “I need to talk to Starscream. Right now.”

Windblade gave him a small nod. “I’ll be here.”

“You’re staying?” Slipstream said. “Great! Let’s play gladiator. You can go first.” Then she thwacked Windblade’s shin so hard she stumbled back a few steps. Windblade remained perfectly still.

“I’ll be here for as long as I survive,” she amended.

Wheeljack thanked her and vanished out the door.


	2. Chapter 2

Wheeljack didn’t hesitate a moment after pushing through the door. “What are we going to do about this?”

Starscream was sitting behind his desk, wings hiked up to an uncomfortably high level, claws flexing in and out as he observed the pale blue screen of his data-terminal. “Ah,” he said, voice dull. “So you’ve seen the latest news, then.”

“When did you find out about this?” Wheeljack didn’t believe for a moment Starscream would have kept such a thing from him, but he _did_ want to know how far along Starscream had gotten with his damage control.

With a curt click of one of his claws on the keypad, the data-terminal vanished. “This morning,” he said, voice losing its taunting edge. “My comm-set was going wild. I figured some wanna-be politician had said something stupid, maybe name-dropped me while he was talking. Imagine my surprise when I get a comm from Windblade telling me to online a data-pad and just look at the news section. She _kindly_ pointed me toward the source of all the rumors.”

Wheeljack took all that in, but mostly, he studied the way Starscream’s wings shook. He didn’t know if it was more from the effort it took to hold them so high, in such a clearly painful, tense position, or from the anger that seeped through Starscream’s voice like venom. It was probably a stupid question, but Wheeljack found himself asking, “Are you okay?”

Starscream’s laugh was mirthless. “Okay?” he echoed hollowly. Red optics narrowed. “Do you have any idea how many mechs want to kill me? Both Autobot _and_ Decepticon? Primus, I’m pretty sure some of those holier-than-thou neutrals would pay good shanix for my wings mounted on their walls.” His servos were clenched into fists. “The delegates have practically been handed blackmail against me on a silver platter. I’m surprised I haven’t yet received any comms with proposals attached and a message telling me to _think of the children_.”

Wheeljack had the fleeting thought that any politician who thought Starscream could be manipulated by simply name-dropping the trine had a reckoning coming quick. “It’s not like you’ll fall for it,” he mentioned.

One of the joints in Starscream’s servo creaked. “That’s not the _point_ ,” he hissed. “I don’t want their designations coming out of their vocalizers.”

“Okay.” Wheeljack let out a faint sigh. “Okay. It’s fine. We can fix this.”

He didn’t know how, and the fact that Starscream was in such a poor mood boded ill for his own efforts, but there had to be something they could do. They’d both spent four million years facing impossible situations and still coming out the other side. Surely they could handle a wayward journalist.

But as Wheeljack glanced back at Starscream, still sheathing and unsheathing his talons, he figured the former Decepticon commander was thinking of fixing things the same way he did back in the war.

“We’re not killing anybody,” Wheeljack clarified.

Starscream’s expression soured.

“It’ll just make it look worse,” Wheeljack reminded him. “If you strike out at her, it’ll make it look like she was right and you’re mad at her for exposing you.”

Starscream said nothing.

“Star. I’m serious. Don’t hurt her.”

He let out a dramatic sigh, flicking his wings hard. “Fine. _Fine_. None of her tainted energon will poison Cybertron’s ground.” That wasn’t quite a promise of no violence, but Wheeljack figured it was the best he was going to get under the circumstances.

Bluewing unquestionably owed him retirement after this, considering he was quite sure he just saved her miserable life.

“Okay.” Wheeljack took another deep vent. Primus, his helm felt like it was spinning, being pulled in a thousand different directions. Part of him wanted to just go back to their hab, dismiss Windblade, huddle up with the trine, and pretend none of this was happening. A more jaded part of him understood that they would never be able to wait out the fallout from something like this. It would never truly fade from the public eye. “What are we going to do?”

Starscream’s voice was soft when he answered, “Do I look like I know?”

Well, Wheeljack wasn’t planning on commenting on how Starscream looked. He preferred his murderous inclinations stay directed at Bluewing, rather than him.

Starscream scoffed. “It’s not even new,” he mentioned, crossing his servos in front of his cockpit. His glare fixed out the window, where the world appeared to continue as though it were another normal day. “Those rumors of hers, I mean. I heard the same thing for four million years in the Decepticons. I’m quite certain that makes her a plagiarist, as well as a rust-sparked glitch.”

Wheeljack had heard those rumors. Particularly nasty versions of just how Starscream had berthed his way up to second-in-command tended to spread around right after the Autobots lost a battle due to his squadrons of Seekers. He was pretty certain Smokescreen had fielded bets on how many illegitimate sparklings Starscream had carried. Looking back on that, with the things he knew about Starscream’s relationship with Megatron now, made his fuel tanks churn like he was going to purge.

“There has to be something we can do,” Wheeljack said. “Some way we can salvage this.”

“What story do you want to go with?” Starscream replied blankly. “Anything we could say, she already has a conspiracy for.”

“The truth, then,” said Wheeljack. “We conjunxed, we had sparklings, we decided to keep them out of the public’s eye. We don’t say anything about it being for their safety, so no side thinks it’s a slight against them. We say it was for privacy, so they could grow up a little.”

Starscream had an answer at the ready. “Oh, but we couldn’t conjunx, remember? Nobody noticed our Four Rites. Obviously, I bribed a Priest of Primus into officiating a sham bonding.”

Wheeljack had to concede to that. There was no evidence they had performed the Four Rites, no public record that could be referenced. It had been private – not secret, but personal. The idea that Starscream’s characteristic manipulations had made their way into his bonding was too good of a conspiracy to pass up. How could they possibly make the bland reality sound more plausible than the eye-catching rumor?

“What if Windblade said something?” Wheeljack prompted. “She officiated the ceremony. She was _there_. She knows everything that happened.”

Starscream gave him a look. “You didn’t read the whole article, did you?”

“I read…” Wheeljack paused. “ _Most_ of the article.”

Starscream cocked an optical ridge.

“I was panicking, okay?” Wheeljack said. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to wake up to find my sparklings’ names plastered all over the news.”

“You missed so much news, sweet-spark,” Starscream drawled. “Don’t you know that Windblade has been paid off by my royal coffers to keep her mouth shut? Or, maybe, you instead believe all that speculation about how Windblade is in on our little conspiracy. After all, how much of a threat to Cybertron and Caminus could I possibly be if I have my servos full with a trine? You know how us Vosnians are with sparklings; practically brood-carriers.” He ended the explanation with a shrug of one shoulder, too tense a movement to even remotely pass as blasé.

“Are you okay?” Wheeljack asked again, softer this time.

Starscream’s jaw clenched. “This isn’t about me,” he said.

“ _I’m_ asking about you.” Starscream still said nothing. “Star.”

A servo flashed up to swipe at his optics in a blur of motion. He looked further away from Wheeljack, almost glaring into a corner at this point. “I didn’t want them to find out this way,” he said. The words inched out from his vocalizer. After a moment, he amended it to, “I didn’t want them to find out.”

Wheeljack understood that. “Plenty of mechs on Cybertron adore you for what you’ve done. I’m sure there are plenty more who know better than to believe some rumors. And, really, Star, you didn’t do anything wrong for them to find out about. So what if you Conjunxed? That’s none of their business.”

Starscream offered a short, scathing laugh. “I’m not talking about Cybertron,” he said. “I don’t care if they know I’m Conjunxed to you. I’m not ashamed of you. I’m talking about the trine.”

Wheeljack’s spark seemed to spin faster – _I’m not ashamed of you_ – and sink – _the trine_ – at the same time.

The trine, who didn’t know anything about the Great War other than that, at some point in the past, there was a war, and even that they only knew out of necessity. They knew it the War was why Wheeljack didn’t take off his battle-mask when their aunts and uncles came over. They knew the War was why their carrier sometimes woke up screaming. They didn’t know about the Autobots, or the Decepticons, and they certainly didn’t know that their creators had spent four million years trying to kill one another. They didn’t even understand the concept of offlining yet. There was no way they could wrap their little processors around four million years of death and hatred and near-extinction.

“We were going to have to talk to them eventually,” Wheeljack said. “They’ll be starting school.” Far too soon, it felt like. “They’ll find out about the War. We weren’t exactly nameless soldiers the past four million years.”

Starscream’s smile was wan and empty. “The mad weapons engineer and the whore of the Decepticons.”

“ _Star_.”

Starscream gave him a scathing look. “Just because you’ve pushed the rumors to the back of your processor doesn’t mean everyone else has. It doesn’t mean _anybody_ else has.”

“So what do we _do_ about it?” Wheeljack asked.

Starscream remained quiet, glaring at his corner.

“Star,” Wheeljack said again, now more softly and less disapproving. “They were always going to find out about the War.”

The arms crossed in front of his chassis tightened. “I didn’t _want_ them to.”

“We can’t exactly hide the past four million years,” Wheeljack pointed out.

“I wish we could.”

Wheeljack didn’t bother agreeing; that would get them nowhere. Either way, his agreement should go unspoken between them. “We could talk to them now. Better they hear it from us than some journalist caught up in all the speculation.”

It was a long moment before Starscream responded. “Maybe you’re right,” he relented. “After all, I’d give us the rest of the cycle before every Transformer in the galaxy knows about this little scandal.”


End file.
